Read Online City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism by Jim Krane - Free Book Online

tide as ifrespecting the end of a benevolent man and his era. The anguished wail of a mourning woman rose from inside the house. The death had defied at last the inscription over the door: “O house, let no grief enter you and let not time betray your owner.”
    The carved wooden doors on the coral house swung open for Sheikh Saeed one last time. The ruler emerged flat on his back on a wooden bier, his body covered in a red-checked cloth. Pallbearers carried the corpse along the creek to the cemetery. The crowd fell in behind, including Sheikh Saeed’s sons, Rashid and Khalifa, wearing simple white
kandouras
. Men led the group in Quranic chants as muezzins at Dubai’s mosques announced the death in melancholy cadences. Women in black robes and masks wailed on the streetcorners and joined the procession as it passed. Hawley heard a Saudi telling the women to get lost, that it was
haram
, forbidden in Islam, for females to join a funeral march. No one paid him any mind.
    Townspeople surrounded the grave to watch the lowering of the old man’s body. Sheikh Saeed had been born in 1878, one of a thousand or so inhabitants in an unknown town on the far edge of the world. He survived as an infant against the odds. He took over as ruler in 1912 upon the death of his uncle, Butti bin Suhail al-Maktoum. The town’s business leaders, Europeans, Indians, and Iranians, were paying respects to his son Rashid, now officially in charge. Hawley found Dubai’s forty-six-year-old leader squatting in the shade of a tree and murmured to him in Arabic, “May God give you consolation.”
    A Pakistani photographer named Noor Ali Rashid was one of those in the crowd, but he’d purposefully left his camera at home. Noor Ali Rashid had only arrived in Dubai a few days earlier, and he’d had a bad experience taking pictures of the dead. In Karachi, he’d snapped a photo of a little girl killed in a traffic accident and a mob had chased him through the streets. He’d barely escaped with his life. He swore off corpse photography after that.
    The simple burial was over by 10:00 a.m. Locals gathered around Sheikh Rashid, kissing him, according to custom, on the nose. The new ruler looked exhausted and disoriented. By the end of the morning, he collapsed. Dr. McCaully had to visit the royal residence a second time.

Rashid in Command
     
    The death of Sheikh Saeed and the end of his forty-six-year rule marked the final stage of Dubai’s long slumber in old Arabia. Very little changed on his watch. His death came like a catalyst, a dam burst that allowed fifty years of pent-up modernity to flood Dubai.
    Sheikh Rashid, who had been running things unofficially for nearly two decades, would use his mandate to put this unknown city on the map. Within a year, Dubai would have a modern port. Within four years, electricity, running water, and telephones. A bridge would span the creek in five years, and street lights would illuminate the town a year later. Queen Elizabeth II would pay Sheikh Rashid not one but two visits, touring Dubai’s new airport terminal in 1972 and then returning to inaugurate the Middle East’s tallest building in 1979.
    The British threw a recognition ceremony for the new leader, complete with a naval artillery salute. Rashid stood on the creek bank amid a smattering of British officials and sheikhs, looking nervous as Hawley read a letter from Queen Elizabeth recognizing him as the legitimate ruler of Dubai.
    This time Noor Ali Rashid brought his camera. The wiry man strode up to Sheikh Rashid and snapped his picture, then asked him to pose with Hawley and snapped a few more. Soon he was stage-managing the event, herding merchants to pose with Dubai’s ruler. A few days later he dropped off a few prints. He’d developed them in his makeshift darkroom with chemicals he’d brought from Pakistan. He filtered the water himself because it was so full of grit that it scratched the film. The Dubai ruler was impressed with the